Over the past decade, vending machine manufacturers have developed new and innovative vending equipment in response to market needs and vending operator demands. These innovations have been, for the most part, adopted by the beverage vending industry. This trend has been influenced by the accelerating rate of technological innovation in the electronic and electro-mechanical component industry. The availability of new technologies has given vending machine manufacturers the tools to address many of the requirements of vending operators. Advances in electronics are now enabling the use of computer controls and data acquisition systems directly inside the vending machine. Some of the latest vending machines now make it possible for vending machine operators to download sales, inventory, and machine health information on-site onto portable computers.
Although these computerized systems make it easier for operators to gather and analyze data, they generally do not provide the real time capabilities that are needed to make a major impact on their vending operations.
There currently exist some remote data capture systems in the vending industry. Examples of such systems include the systems disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,608,643; 4,766,548 and 4,412,292. Most of the conventional systems make use of point-to-point data acquisition systems that use a wireless data transmission system to receive and send information from/to individual vending machines. Some of the systems use wire-line data transmission systems (e.g. telephone lines) instead of a wireless one. The wireless point-to-point systems are hampered by the relatively high cost of long-range wireless transceivers at each of the vending machines. Further, the systems that implement long-range wireless transceivers at each vending machine have a severe limitation in that they cannot be made to function properly in locations that do not have a clear RF path to the central base station outside the building, perhaps even miles away. For example, if a vending machine is located deep inside a building the ability to transmit/receive data to/from the outside of the building is hampered by the signal attenuation caused by the building's structure. On the other hand, the wire-line systems suffer from high infrastructure costs given that dedicated wire must be drawn to each vending machine in order to create the point-to-point data link. Establishing a wire-line system is often a difficult task and frequently limits the ability to move associated vending machines from one location to another location. Thus, these conventional remote data capture systems generally do not adequately fill the needs of vending machine operators.